a roll-call of pint-sized ghosts with the whimsy
of Santa calling his reindeer. Was she unlucky

just at quasimaternal love or the whole skein
of life, each fate thread collecting knots as she

tried to fit her guilt and regrets into a costume
that could no longer breathe in the absence?

***

John F. Buckley and Martin Ott began their ongoing games of poetic volleyball in the spring of 2009. Since then, their collaborations have been accepted into more than seventy journals and anthologies, including Barrow Street, Drawn to Marvel, Map Literary, Rabbit Ears: TV Poems, Redivider, and ZYZZYVA, and gathered into two full-length collections on Brooklyn Arts Press, Poets’ Guide to America(2012) and Yankee Broadcast Network (2014). They are now writing poems for a third manuscript, American Wonder, about superheroes and supervillains.